Promise SmartStor NS4600 Review. Page 7

Promise Company famous for its RAID controllers has been working very hard on entering the NAS market lately. Today we are going to talk about their new four-drive NAS that according to the manufacturer delivers Enterprise-Class RAID technology for Home, SOHO and Small Business.

Functionality Enhancements

The manufacturer has implemented a functionality enhancement mechanism based on plugins. At the time of our writing this, there were no plugins available save for the above-described three. The NS4600 does not offer any standard means of console access. The telnet daemon is available on port 2380 buts it can only be accessed by the users root and engmode with unknown passwords. This can be bypassed using holes in the web-interface, though.

Considering that the NS4600 is based on an x86-compatible platform, software for other NASes can be used for it as well. For example, you can install optware with its hundreds of programs, even though the installation is not a straightforward procedure. Hopefully, Promise, like other manufacturers, will allow enthusiasts to develop new plugins and will officially allow command-line access. The device’s functionality could be greatly expanded then because its high-performance processor is obviously not used fully.